Along with the Eric-inspired thread this year on putting communication over targets, John Piazza, in a comment this morning, sums up another important thread that has appeared here this year:
Not sure if I would have changed anything, but my life would have been far less stressful last year, if I had been ok with doing more traditional work with the students I inherited from my ultra-intense grammar predecessor.
Right now David Maust is working with his local university on a mentorship program for Latin teachers in training. Central to this program, for David, is educating new Latin teachers on how to navigate the particular school culture in which they find themselves, and using this knowledge of school culture as a gauge about how much CI and what kind of CI is appropriate.
In the short term, we NEED students to be able to go home and tell their parents that they are “learning something,” even if that definition of “learning something” is completely false. The response: “not really, we just mess around and tell silly stories,” might be a description of the most effective CI classroom, but this is not acceptable for us professionally.
Thanks for bringing this up, Ben. CI activism in the wrong school at the wrong time (or presented in the wrong way) can destroy careers.